Benjamin Pike Compound Monocular Microscope

This microscope is signed "Pike, Maker, 518 Broadway, New York, No. 1177". The model featured below was redrawn from photographs of the original microscope, which is part of the Billings microscope collection at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC.

Benjamin Pike and his son were New York microscope dealers in the middle nineteenth century, and they imported English and French microscopes. Benjamin Pike Sons & Company were the dealers when this instrument was signed in 1878. A large reversed claw-footed base supports two uprights that are attached to the limb with a pivot joint. The stage plate and trunnion are cast into one piece and fastened to the limb. A gimbal holds the substage double mirror. Although the microscope is without a condenser, there is a tube beneath the stage to support one. The body tube has a short cone nose and a graduated drawtube. Focus is achieved by a coarse rack mechanism attached to the limb.